


But in that sleep of Death what dreams may come

by Kaleidoscope_Carousel



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Nightmares, mentions of blood and character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-08
Updated: 2014-04-08
Packaged: 2018-01-18 17:03:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1436068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaleidoscope_Carousel/pseuds/Kaleidoscope_Carousel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sara has nightmares.<br/>AU in that the last five minutes of Heir to the Demon never happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But in that sleep of Death what dreams may come

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a mini fic that I posted to my tumblr and somehow blossomed into over a thousand words. The style of the first bit doesn't really match the rest, so you'll probably be able to tell where the mini fic stopped and the rest began. Unbetaed, so any constructive criticism is welcome. Feel free to tell me what worked, what didn't, and if I made any glaring grammatical errors. I do my best to avoid those.  
> Title is from Hamlet

When the nightmares come, as they inevitably do, Sara no longer wakes screaming. She learned discipline long ago, even in her sleep. When the nightmares come, she wakes silently, sweaty and shaking, but prepared for battle. She keeps a knife under her pillow, and her staff under the bed, although she can kill a man with her bare hands (and has done so, more than once). When the nightmares come, she reaches across the bed for a presence that isn’t there any longer, a hand to hold that she was the first to let go of. When the nightmares leave her wide awake in the middle of the night, terror is now replaced by tears, just as silent, that leave her body exhausted and spent. 

Nyssa is gone, and she is the one who sent her away. 

Sara is used to moving silently and in the dark, although she has tried to unlearn some of her habits now that Felicity has threatened to buy her a collar with a bell on it. (“I swear to God Sara between you and Oliver stalking around and popping up at me I’m going to die of a heart attack before I’m thirty”). But this time she maintains the quiet so she won’t disturb her roommate sleeping just beyond the kitchen. She uses a pot to boil the water for tea, instead of a kettle so the whistling won’t give her away. She misses the Tibetan herbs she was able to get so easily in Nanda Parbat, but will settle for Twining’s chamomile instead. She never thought that one of the characteristics she’d take away from being an international assassin was tea snobbery, but the drink is definitely not the same in Starling city. 

The creak of Felicity’s door opening has her out of her chair with a knife from the knife block in her hands before she realises it, but she’s able to surreptitiously put it back before Felicity stumbles out of her room, hair all mussed up, and blinking owlishly. Part of it is probably because the only light is coming through the blinds from the streetlamp outside the living room window, and part of it is probably because she’s not wearing her glasses, and can’t see much anyway.

“Sara?” she says, and then yawns. “What’re you doing up?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Sara answers. “It’s three am.”

“Hadta pee, and I aksed you first.” Sara smiles at the mumbling way a sleepy Felicity talks. 

“You still answered first, anyway. I couldn’t sleep.” 

“Oh, ok.” Felicity says, “I’m just gonna. . .” she trails off and gestures vaguely in the direction of the bathroom. When she emerges, she seems a little bit more awake, and joins Sara at the table. Sara is staring hard at the mug of tea sitting in front of her. She hasn’t yet taken a sip. “Are you going to drink it, or are you trying to lift it with your mind, jedi style?” Sara sighs, and leans back in her chair.

“Hadn’t decided yet.”

“You ok?” Felicity asks after a moment or two.

“Me? I’m always ok.” Sara answers.

“Sara, I work with Oliver Queen, I can tell a full on brood when I see it. You don’t have to be strong for me. I don’t care. I mean I do care. I care about you and Oliver of course, I just don’t care if you’re not always stoic and mysterious and angsty. Come to think of it I think Oliver’s kind of cornered the market on angst recently, though Roy is catching up, and they may be trying to out-angst each other in some weird, male ego posturing show, but that’s not important. You can tell me what’s wrong. I didn’t know you before. I’m not going to judge.”

“Thank you Felicity, but I really can’t.” Sara’s not about to burden Felicity’s world with the images she wakes to night after night. Images of Ivo’s gun pointed at her head, images of Shado’s corpse, images of Oliver, beaten and bloody, and of course images of the aftermath of that final battle with Slade. And those are the nicer dreams. Some nights she wakes up and she can feel the blood on her hands, feel it dripping between her fingers, and staining the sheets where she grasps them to try to anchor herself to the present. Some nights she sees the faces of the people she’s killed lined up in a row, blank lifeless eyes somehow still accusing. Sometimes those faces are her family, Oliver, Felicity, Diggle, and even Roy, glaring at her in death. Why didn’t you save us? They seem to say. Why couldn’t you have done something right, for once? Sometimes, especially recently, it’s Nyssa, body twisted, bloody, and broken lying at the feet of her father. Her eyes are glassy and sightless and sometimes Sara wakes up at this point, but sometimes she doesn’t and the dream gets worse from there. Nyssa’s slack mouth opens and her voice is a whisper like a death rattle,

“I granted you your freedom, and so my father granted me mine. There is only one true freedom, _Altaïr Al-Asfar_ , you know this, and still you sent me to find it at the hands of those I love.” When she has these dreams, it isn’t even her training that keeps Sara from screaming, but the pure horror of what her mind has conjured up. 

She doesn’t realise she’s squeezing the handle of her mug so tightly until Felicity puts her hand on Sara’s wrist and she feels Felicity’s thumb against the tendons. “I’m going to admit that I can’t really see you right now, but the fuzzy blonde blur across the table just went a shade paler so I’m going to go ahead and assume that you’re lying out of your ass about being ok and you’re actually really upset. Whatever it is, Sara, I really am here for you.” Sara also doesn’t realise she’s crying until she tries to thank Felicity again, and the words won’t come against the lump in her throat. 

She swallows a few times to chase it away and manages a quiet “thanks.” She tries to wipe away her tears without Felicity noticing. It doesn’t work of course, and Felicity gives her about three seconds notice—“I’m going to hug you now,” she says—before Sara finds herself wrapped in an embrace. Felicity is sleep-warm and smells like the lavender dryer sheets she bought last week. More importantly Felicity is solid, and real, and here and Sara clings to her gratefully.  
“I don’t know what’s more frustrating about you hero types,” Felicity muses into Sara’s hair, “that you always put yourself in the line of fire, or that you always think you have to go through everything alone. You’re not alone, and I won’t let you be. Not ever.” 

Sara can’t help but laugh a little at the fierceness in Felicity’s voice. She opens her mouth to speak but Felicity cuts her off. “And don’t you dare say you’re not a hero. You save lives. No matter what you did before, you made a choice to change it. So even if you don’t think you’re a hero, I do, and so do a lot of people. You’re a hero to me, Sara, and there’s nothing you can say that can change my mind.”

Sara just squeezes Felicity a little harder, as the tears slow to a trickle on her cheeks. “I really needed that, Felicity. Thank you.”

“Hey,” Felicity says letting her arms fall and straightening up, “what are sidekicks for?”

“You’re so much more than a sidekick, you’re irreplaceable.” Now Sara can see a change of colour in Felicity’s face. She’s pretty sure the other girl is blushing. “I’m serious. You’re the heart and soul of this team. Felicity. You’re my hero.”

“Shush, you. Now come on, let’s go back to bed.” 

Sara hesitates a moment before speaking. “Felicity, would it be weird if I. . .I mean I’m kind of. . .I don’t want to sleep alone. Can I come sleep in your room? I’ll just crash on the carpet, but I can’t stay by myself tonight.”

“Sure, Sara. Come on.” Felicity grabs Sara’s hand and leads her toward the bedroom. “But you’re not being some self sacrificing hero again and sleeping on the floor. I have room in the bed.”

“Thanks for the offer, but I’m not ready to share sleeping space with anybody, not yet, not after. . .” she trails off but Felicity seems to understand. “I just can’t be alone right now.”

“Ok, just give me a second.” Felicity rummages around in the back of her closet and with an “aha!” pulls out a new looking yoga mat and an old sleeping bag. She unrolls both for Sara and tosses her a pillow from the bed. “Hopefully that will be comfortable enough. Should be, I barely used the mat. Even though it did take me forever to get out of that stupid gym membership.”

“It’s great, Felicity, really. I’ll be just fine.”

“Alright, but if you need anything just yell, I’ll be right here. I mean, don’t yell because I have this one neighbour who will complain about literally any noise I make outside of regular hours which makes watching superhero movies really awkward because you have to have the volume up and she’ll bang on the wall during the best parts and don’t even get me started on the one time my ex-boyfriend came by drunk and was trying to get in at, like, four in the morning, but,” realising she was rambling Felicity slowed down, “well, you get the point.” Sara just chuckled softly.

“Goodnight Felicity,” she said.

“Goodnight Sara,” Felicity answered. “Sleep well.”

“You know, I think I just might.”


End file.
